Baudelaire,
speaking of the prelude to _Lohengrin_, remarks: 'I felt myself
_delivered from the bonds of weight_.' And when Wagner sought to
represent, in the highest regions of celestial space, the
apparition of the angels bearing the Holy Grail to earth, he uses
very high notes, and a kind of chorus played exclusively by the
violins, divided into eight parts, in the highest notes of their
register. The descent to earth of the celestial choir is rendered
by lower and lower notes, the progressive disappearance of which
represents the reascension to the ethereal regions.
"Sounds seem to rise and fall; that is a fact. It is difficult to
explain it. Some have seen in it a habit derived from the usual
notation by which the height of the note corresponds to its
height in the score. But the impression is too deep and general
to be explained by so superficial and recent a cause. It has been
suggested also that high notes are generally produced by small
and light bodies, low notes by heavy bodies. But that is not
always true. It has been said, again, that high notes in nature
are usually produced by highly placed objects, while low notes
arise from caves and low placed regions.
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